Re: Rate The Last Movie You Watched.
Leon The Professional
I'd give it a 8.5/10. First movie I seen with Jean Reno as the protagonist. The first time I ever knew about the guy was seeing him in the video game Onimusha 3. Besides the awkward relationship between him and the young Natalie Portman, the movie was awesome. I loved Reno's personality in the movie, quiet yet deadly. I can sort of understand the relationship aspect of the movie, however I wished it was more of a father/daughter relationship rather than what the movie portrayed. Nonetheless it achieved of showing Reno's change of heart towards having emotions in the end. The ending was sad but epic.
If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Cmon GARY OLDMAN IS IN IT! He must be in his prime and his acting skills really shine in this movie as a antagonist.
It's a must see!
I absolutely love this movie . . I read a really good take on the film on imdb that I will post here:
******** Spoliers *******
Leon
A lot depends on a realization that the film is a tragicomic fantasy with lots of intentionally off-the-wall nonsense. This has nothing to do with Besson not knowing how to create a realistic script. He changed his own very realistic script to include deliberately over-the-top comic nonsense at which the audience was supposed to laugh. For instance:
The original script shows a Léon very much like the character Victor in Nikita. The older Mathilda in it is equally cold-blooded. In an early scene, he is showing Mathilda how to open a locked door. A curious bystander walks up and Léon casually shoots him dead. There are no paint balls or grand rescues from the EPB building.
He teaches Mathilda how to estimate distance with the scope on the rifle and she practices by firing live rounds at an old man on a park bench who sits bewildered by the noise from her misses until her third shot hits and kills him. She has her own hand gun with live rounds that she knows how to use. The Russian Roulette scene in the original is a real test that Léon requires to prove that Mathilda is not afraid of dying. There is no pretense of pulling the gun away. When Mathilda does pull the trigger that happens to be on an empty chamber, the original Léon is overjoyed and covers her face with kisses.
The original older Mathilda was not only a cold-blooded killer but an older and knowledgeable seductress. She asks for a kiss with some tongue in it, arranges for Léon to see her naked in the bathroom and actively seduces him by straddling his legs while he is sitting in a chair. Instead of an attack on the EPB building, the original Mathilda takes revenge on a kid who mocked her by killing him in a game of Russian Roulette. Léon's "rescue" involves killing a few policemen questioning Mathilda about the killing at the apartment building and it is quickly followed by Léon being found and killed. Mathilda dies herself after killing several policemen. She is wearing Léon's overcoat, kisses the dead hitman, tosses a grenade pin to Stansfield and then smiles at him as she reveals a cluster of grenades hidden under the coat.
In the filmed version, Besson transformed Léon into a caricature of knightly attributes, hence the milk symbolizing spiritual innocence and his regression into childhood, the meekness and humility, and the extraordinary feats of skill. Mathilda is transformed into a child/helpless princess who thinks that she knows about sex and violence, but actually knows nothing, is constantly making unreasonable demands, and forever getting herself in trouble from which she has to be rescued. Her purpose in the script is to force Léon through one trial after another. His knightly code keeps him from being able to kill her or let her come to harm in any way, or to compromise her honor/chastity.
The success of the film depends on the audience recognizing and thinking about the layers of artifice, just as the original medieval audiences recognized that real knights were often anything but paragons of virtue and that the chaste spiritual story lines were very tongue in cheek. You get not only the surface tragicomedy, but visual commentary about what is real and what is false in the myths we accept regarding sex, spiritual growth, rationales for "noble" behavior and bloody violence. Mathilda cannot barter for Léon's love with sex or maid service or money. What is there comes with no strings or expectations attached.
